Dinner cruise on the Spirit of Norfolk

This week Ben and I are taking a little mini-vacation (or “staycation”) — spending some time with each other before camp really gets going and consumes every waking moment. Today is the last day of work for the week – Friday, Saturday and Sunday we are going to be doing a whole bunch of fun things here in the area. Last night we kicked things off by going on a dinner cruise on a small cruising ship called the Spirit of Norfolk. It was so much fun! It took me back to our dating days when we would do tons of mushy gushy romantic things during our visits to see each other. (Of course, the 4 or 5 months that would go by between those visits were not quite so romantic, alas.)

The weather was absolutely PERFECT. Could not have been better. We got to see a beautiful sunset over the water…

The whole evening went very smoothly. We arrived at the dock about fifteen minutes early, so we walked around a bit and listened to a jazz band that was performing on the green nearby.

Once we boarded, we were given a table by the window and told we could start eating. There was a nice buffet with lots of yummy food. Here’s Ben. He’s excited about eating salad. He ate so much salad that night, I couldn’t believe it. I guess he really likes salad.

While we ate, the ship pulled away from the dock and cruised out into the harbor. It was awesome watching all the buildings, docked ships and other cool stuff go by.

There was tons of food and music. One weird and interesting thing was that the wait staff were also entertainers. They would serve drinks and clear plates for a while, then they would go behind a curtain and come out wearing sparkly vests over their black uniforms, walk out on the dance floor, grab mikes and belt out powerful songs like Aretha Franklin’s “At Last.” They weren’t bad singers either. Then they would give a little bow, go back behind the curtain, and come out sans sparkly vests to continue waiting tables. It was very interesting.

There was also a DJ who spent the night trying to get people to get up and dance. We were on the second deck and most of the people were a little older than us, so the DJ played more oldies and, well, let’s just say people weren’t really going all that crazy on the dance floor. Okay, they weren’t going crazy AT ALL. That was OK though, it was pretty chill and relaxing. Ben and I put in requests for some of our favorites songs and we enjoyed dancing to those as well as to some of the other songs we knew.

In contrast, on the first deck there was a crazy pack of teenagers from Tennessee who were on some kind of prom trip. Ben and I went down there for a minute just out of curiosity …. they were blasting the music and pretty much all of the kids were packed together like sardines, all writhing around on the dance floor. There were a whole lot of sweaty bodies and cheap shiny prom dresses. Wow. It was a little gross. Way over in the corner you could see a few adults, no doubt chaperones, looking about as miserable as anyone would look who was forced to sit for several hours in a dark room with nothing to do but try to ignore the pounding hip-hop music and the smell of sweaty hormonal teenagers. Poor them.

When we weren’t eating or talking or trying out rhumba moves on the dance floor, Ben and I went outside to stroll around on the decks and enjoy the beautiful view. It got pretty chilly though as the sun went down, so we couldn’t stay out long.

A lot of people offered to take pictures for us, which was awfully nice of them.

So that’s it. We had a wonderful time. Now we just have to get through this last workday before we have a long weekend together. I have tons of stuff to do today though, mostly involving the extremely repetitive and mind-numbing task of typing camp applications into our database. Funnnnn!!! Oh well, at least I have Pandora, without which life would be sad indeed. ;-)

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Hello and welcome to my home on the web. I blog from my small but cozy apartment in Virginia Beach, VA where I live with my husband, Ben. Here you'll find a little bit of everything from my home - thoughts, recipes, funny stories, design inspiration, and the occasional knock-knock joke. Make yourself at home...